Chief of Army Staff General Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan and Commanding General US Army Pacific General Vincent K Brooks pose for a photo with participants of Pacific Armies Management Seminar-38 at Hotel Radisson Blu on Sunday. ispr Photo A four-day Pacific Armies Management Seminar (PAMS) began in Dhaka on Sunday with special emphasis on joint cooperation to counter international militancy and terrorism.The 38th PAMS is co-hosted by the Bangladesh Army and the US Army, Pacific with the theme ‘A new focus on the Asia-Pacific region: Opportunities and challenges for land forces’. Bangladesh got the opportunity to host the seminar after 22 years while in 1994 Bangladesh hosted the seminar for the first time. Army officers and security officials from 24 nations in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region attended the seminar. The programme was inaugurated in a city hotel on Sunday. At the inaugural programme, Chief of Army staff, Bangladesh, General Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan and US Army pacific Commander General Vincent Brooks delivered the welcome speech. In his speech, General Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan said, “Since the end of ‘Cold War’, the security concerns of the nation-states have undergone phenomenal changes. Inter-state conflicts have become more often exception than a trend.” “We are now facing the kind of threats that transcend the geographical borders…..And of course, no single nation has the unique capacity to deal with all these threats,” he said. “When threats operate across the border on a global scale, it becomes pointless to restrict our efforts within our own individual national means. There comes the need for cooperation among the nations,” the Chief of army staff said. General Karim also mentioned: “PAMS 38 offers us the much sought-for opportunity to discuss such common issues and explore new areas of cooperation. The purpose is to cast a new look on the security environment of the region in search of emerging opportunities; and develop a theoretical construct for collective efforts towards surmounting the prevailing and upcoming challenges.” US Army pacific Commander General Vincent Brooks said, “We should work together to address common threats that confront us: International terrorism and violent extremism, cyber-crime, infectious diseases, and environmental changes that threaten the safety of human populations.” Vincent Brooks also said, “This PAMS has become the premium annual forum in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region for promoting security cooperation, enhancing, dialogue and cooperation among nations, and contributing in many ways to the shared goal of regional stability and prosperity.” At the seminar Professor Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, Department of International Relations of Dhaka University and Chistopher J.G Snedden, professor of Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu of Hawaii presented two keynote papers on this year’s theme. Later, Lt Gen Md Mainul Islam, chief of general staff of Bangladesh Army, and Gen Brooks discussed many bilateral issues and later they held a press conference and answered the reporters’ queries. At the conference, both generals said that they agreed to work more closely together for peace of the region. In reply to a query Lt Gen Md Mainul Islam said that to stop the cyber crime all have to work together as it has no area and it is hard to trace from where it has been happening. The participants are scheduled to discuss several topics, including “Practicing cooperation, developing interoperability of concepts for non-traditional security”, “Balancing requirements for meeting traditional and non-traditional threats”, “Civil-military and multinational cooperation, the essential elements for future stability” and “Building response capacity of land forces for issues of environmental security”. The US Army Pacific began this seminar only with nine countries at Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1978, and since then it is being organised in different parts of the world. Now it stood at a platform of 36 countries. It is a multinational military seminar that provides a forum for senior-level (lieutenant colonel to lieutenant general, or national equivalent) officers from the Asia Pacific’s regional ground forces to exchange views and ideas. The seminar will end on 17 September.
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